Marc Myers writes daily on jazz legends and legendary jazz recordings

June 03, 2020

Today, jazz flourishes in Athens—or at least did before the virus lockdown. Many clubs dot the city, and gifted Greek jazz musicians perform there. Jazz greatness in Greece begins with a pianist whose name is likely new to you—Manolis Mikelis (above). That's because Mikelis barely recorded, preferring to perform throughout Europe during his lifetime.

Back in the mid-1950s, when the U.S. State Department began sending American jazz musicians on goodwill tours to the far reaches of the world, artists found an uncertain environment in Athens. Back then, Greece's civil war between 1946 and 1949 was still fresh in the minds of many Greeks, and political emotions ran hot. Cultural tensions also bubbled up.

According to Lisa E. Davenport's Jazz Diplomacy: Promoting America in the Cold War Era, a State Department official in a memo frowned on Dizzy Gillespie's "dizzy" behavior in Athens in 1956, noting he had arrived an hour late to a buffet dinner and that sophisticated, conservative Athenians preferred the "high arts" to jazz. Compared to the Soviet Union's Russian Folk Ballet touring at the same time, the memo continued, Gillespie's audiences in Greece were smaller, and jazz might not be the best U.S. offering for holding off communist influenes.

But Dizzy's dinner tardiness and mischievous sense of humor didn't stop Athenian jazz fans and Greek jazz musicians from admiring the trumpet great and other American artists whose albums they heard or collected. One of these admiring Greek artists was Mikelis. [Photo above of Dizzy Gillespie and his band performing at a matinee for Greek students in 1956, courtesy of the Marshall Stearns Collection, Institute of Jazz Studies, Rutgers University]

According to Jimi Mentis in Athens, who turned me on to Mikelis last week, the jazz great was born in 1924 and, as a child, studied classical piano for six years. Here's what Jimi wrote me about Mikelis:

Forced to switch to accordion after the death of his father during Nazi occupation in 1942 to support his family, Mikelis with a few other Greek musicians became the first group to play jazz in post-war Greece to great acclaim.

In 1950, Mikelis moved to posh Beirut, Lebanon, where he remained for four years, resuming his classical piano studies while playing at clubs to make ends meet. He then played gigs in Italy and Paris, a jazz center then. But jazz work for non-Americans and non-French was difficult to come by.

So Mikelis moved on to Frankfurt, Germany, to play on bases where U.S. Forces were stationed as well as at the Domicil du Jazz, an after-hours club there. In Germany, he worked with Percy Heath during the Modern Jazz Quartet's two-week stint in 1955. After a short time in Morocco, he he lived in Spain for four years.

There, he worked the best clubs in Madrid, such as the Pasapoga and Whisky Jazz, playing in 1960 with members of the Quincy Jones Orchestra, including Phil Woods, Sahib Shihab, Benny Bailey and Les Spann. He and Spanish piano virtuoso Tete Montoliu became good friends.

After a stint with Don Ellis in Germany, where he met George Russell, he returned to post civil war-torn Greece in 1962. By then, Greece was awash in Marshall Plan cash, and the demand for skilled musicians was high. Mikelis also recorded for film, playing piano and vibes.

But it was the new Athens Hilton's Galaxy Bar (above), with its stupendous view of the city, that became his home for 12 years. When Stan Getz visited Athens in 1967 for the Athens Festival under the Acropolis for four concerts between July 10 and 16, Getz had a young Chick Corea on piano. In his spare time, Corea could be seen at the Galaxy either cherishing Mikelis's mastery or sitting in on drums.

After the Hilton period, Mikelis became a fixture of the Athens jazz scene, jamming with all the greats who visited in the 1970s, such as Ray Brown, Milt Jackson, Grady Tate and Monty Alexander.

Mikelis idolized Art Tatum and Oscar Peterson for technique and Bill Evans for lyricism. But as he said, "Red Garland (above) and Tommy Flanagan play with the most soul." That's where his heart was. This shy and self-effacing piano giant died in 1990 at age 66.

Here, with a special thanks to Jimi, are links to clips of Mikelis's extraordinary playing, both in concert and on an album. You can find The Flowering Almond Tree at Spotify:

Here'sThe Flowering Almond Tree, a solo piano performance played for the first time in front of an audience, as he says in Greek on the recording...

And here'sSatin Doll, Misty, You Stepped Out of a Dream and other songs...

A terrible shame that a U.S. producer didn't bring Mikelis over to New York for a series of recording sessions. As a result, he has remained Greece's greatest jazz secret and treasure. And now you know, too.

June 02, 2020

Lennie Niehaus, a Los Angeles alto saxophonist and prolific composer for big bands and his own small groups starting in the 1950s before moving on to television and Clint Eastwood films, died May 28. He was 90.

Lennie was one of the giants of the West Coast linear jazz sound. Along with Bill Holman, Shorty Rogers, Gerry Mulligan, Pete Rugolo and Dave Pell, Lennie arranged for West Coast ensembles and big bands in the 1950s, introducing a new dynamic, swinging approach.

A highly trained classical musician, Lennie by 1954 was fast becoming known for his orchestral punch and harmonic reed writing. Rather than arrange for vocalists with the advent of the 12-inch LP in 1956, Lennie preferred to score charts for Stan Kenton's band in the mid-1950s and very early 1960s. Like Bill Holman, Quincy Jones, Johnny Mandel and Lalo Schifrin, Lennie spent the decades that followed in the Hollywood studios, giving movie soundtracks and television shows a sophisticated and authentic jazz flavor.

Lennie approached contrapuntal jazz from the perspective of an alto saxophonist, which meant a greater sensitivity to the higher end of the reed section when creating voicings. And his sound on the alto sax bears the influences of Charlie Parker and Lee Konitz.

Retrospectively, Lennie was known primarily for three major areas of work: his Stan Kenton arrangements and solos, his small-group leadership dates for Contemporary Records; and his many movie and TV scores, including a long association with Eastwood.

Here's my complete 2009 interview with Lennie:

JazzWax: You were born in St. Louis. How did you wind up in Los Angeles?Lennie Niehaus: My father was a violinist. He played in a 60-piece orchestra that accompanied silent movies in large theaters in the 1920s. He was the concertmaster. When someone on the screen said “I love you,” you'd see it written out on the screen and the orchestra would play Tchaikovsky or Brahms. I still remember when I was 5, seeing a movie and watching my father playing. It was like a dream.

JW: What happened when talkies began in the late 1920s?LN: Sound movies didn’t start all at once across the country. Talkies were something of a novelty early on. Smaller movie theaters continued to play the older silent movies with live music behind them. The big theaters got the new movies with the sound. But as the years went on and talkies took hold, the live orchestras were cut down to smaller groups, and then to just a violin and piano and drums for local theaters. Finally, the work just dried up.

JW: What did your father do to survive?LN: As soon as talkies began to take hold, the Hollywood studios started to set up their own orchestras. My dad heard about opportunities in the studio orchestras out there, so he packed up our family and moved us to Los Angeles.

JW: What was your first instrument?LN: The violin. My dad was my teacher. He was born in Russia and had attended the St. Petersburg Conservatory with Jascha Heifetz. It was a strict place. If a kid played a wrong note, they would hit him over the knuckles with a ruler.

JW: Was your dad a good teacher?LN: My dad was a great violinist but had no patience for kids who didn’t get it immediately. With the violin, you hold your thumb arching backward so your fingers can reach all the strings and you can play fast. My thumb would creep over the instrument’s neck. My father kept telling me to keep my thumb down. One day he hit my thumb and the violin fell and cracked. That was it for violin lessons [laughs].

JW: In school, what did you play?LN: In grade school, my music teacher urged me to play the oboe because the orchestra needed one. It was still the Depression. I told my teacher that I didn’t think my family could afford one. So the teacher gave me an oboe that belonged to the school. I started to play the instrument little by little. I was a ferocious practicer. Violin lessons had taught me about playing and helped me learn other instruments quickly.

JW: How did you become interested in jazz?LN: By listening to the big bands. I liked Harry James, and when I heard tenor saxophonist Corky Corcoran play The Mole in 1942, I wanted to play the tenor saxophone. My father was in shock. He said, “The saxophone! You play either the piano or violin, not the saxophone. You’ll wind up playing in a house of prostitution.” [laughs] Actually he was right. I did play in small funky clubs later.

JW: Did you buy a tenor?LN: I tried. I worked in a restaurant at a local Grant's, which was like Woolworth's. I'd collect the dishes and put them on a dumbwaiter that I raised to get the dishes washed. I made a few bucks that way. When I thought I had saved enough, I went to the music store and asked about a tenor sax. The man said it was $125. So I asked the price of the Martin alto saxophone that was there, too. He said $75. So I bought it and became an alto player.

JW: Did you take to jazz?LN: It consumed me. I’d go home and practice the oboe and alto saxophone all afternoon and evening. When I was in high school, they needed a bassoon player so I volunteered. I quickly learned how to play it, and by the end of high school could play all three instruments plus the violin pretty well.

JW: When did you first hear bebop?LN: I became interested in Bird [Charlie Parker] and bebop in late 1945, when Bird came to the West Coast. I went to see him at Billy Berg’s, even though I was underage. The music blew me away. I couldn’t play as fast as Bird then, but hearing him didn’t discourage me. I wanted to play like him. I also became interested in Lee Konitz in the late 1940s. My playing back then evolved into Bird’s bebop with a Lee Konitz edge. Lee had studied with Lennie Tristano, and they were doing interesting things with modal scales.

JW: Did you have a band in high school?LN: Yes. I was starting to arrange then, too. In high schooI I met Phil Carreon, who wanted to start a band that sounded like Count Basie's. He bought stock arrangements of the band’s charts, and I started writing for the band. Phil liked what I was doing.

JW: How big a band?LN: Big. He had five saxes, three trumpets and three trombones plus a rhythm section. I was writing a lot of charts for him. One day I was playing a dance in my high school and Phil walked in. A lot of the guys in the band recognized him and started nudging each other, saying, “Hey, there’s Phil Carreon, the bandleader.” Phil came right over to me and said, “How would you like to play for my band?” The other guys were amazed. So in high school, in my spare time, I became a lead alto player in Phil's band and was writing charts.

JW: What did you arrange for Carreon?JN: Original bebop charts and tunes with tightly written sax solis. One arrangement that stands out was a chart of Lover Man. I used to listen to Sarah Vaughan’s version a lot, where she’d sing the melody and Dizzy Gillespie played a solo on the bridge. I made her vocal line a trumpet solo for the band. Then I transcribed Dizzy’s solo and harmonized it for the sax section, the way Supersax was voiced years later.

JW: How was the Carreon band?LN: Great. The sax section at different times featured Herb Geller, Herbie Steward, Teddy Edwards and Warne Marsh. Billy Byers was in the band, too.

JW: Wow talk about a reed section.LN: The whole Four Brothers sound was actually started by Gene Roland in a rehearsal band he had out in L.A. in 1946 that included Stan Getz, Zoot Sims, Jimmy Giuffre and Herbie Steward. It was before Jimmy Giuffre wrote Four Brothers for Woody Herman in 1947. My unison reed section writing also was early comparatively. Whenever I'd arrange, I'd always add a sax soli. [Photo above of Gene Roland, standing, with Stan Kenton, courtesy of University of North Texas]

JW: In high school, did you arrange for any other bands besides Phil Carreon's?LN: No. I was still a kid. But I did have ambition. One day I took my arrangement of Lover Man down to Billy Berg’s where Dizzy Gillespie's band was rehearsing. I had planned to go up to him and tell him about my arrangement but I chickened out. I was afraid I would put the parts down on the stands and the musicians would say, “What are all these 16th notes?” We played the arrangement with Phil’s band, though, and it sounded great.

JW: When did you graduate high school?LN: I skipped a grade in high school and graduated in 1946. I had just turned 17 years old and started college right after graduation. World War II had just ended, and a lot of the vets were studying on the G.I. Bill. In classes, they’d give me looks like, “What’s this kid doing in college?” [laughs] The classes were made up mostly of 25-year-old guys. It was good for me. I grew up fast.

JW: Where did you go to college?LN: First I went to Los Angeles City College and then Los Angeles State College music school. I majored in composition. I had very good teachers, including Leonard Stein, who was an authority on Arnold Schoenberg and became director of the Schoenberg Institute at USC. I was studying classical and playing jazz in a band off-campus. That band had some great players: [pianist] Dodo Marmarosa, [guitarist] Tony Rizzi and others.

JW: How did you wind up joining Stan Kenton's band in 1951?LN: When I was 22, Stan [Kenton] called me and said, “Art Pepper is leaving the band. We’ve tried several guys but we haven’t found someone with the right sound.” Stan said he was looking for a jazz alto player. That's the second alto, the chair that takes the solos. He said he was auditioning at the Florentine Gardens in L.A. and asked me to come down. The date we set also happened to be the same day I had to go take my physical for the Army. Up until that point, my years in college had kept me out of the draft.

JW: How did you do?LN: I went down to the Florentine Gardens at 11 a.m. The first tune Stan called was Gerry Mulligan’s Limelight. I was in the second alto chair, reading the jazz chart. Here comes the end of the chorus and the first solo is me. So I play it, and Stan liked my sound. We tried a couple of other things, like Deep Purple. Stan asked me to read the first alto part to see how I'd do on that. After we finished, Stan and I sat down, and he said, “Lennie, I like the way you play. Want to play in my band?”

JW: What was going through your mind?LN: I was thrilled. I looked at Stan and remember saying to myself, “Jesus, this guy is old.” He was 39 at the time [laughs]. Which was exciting and intimidating for someone who's just starting out. To Stan's credit, he didn’t want to sound like Woody Herman or Count Basie or anyone else. Which is why he'd constantly change the band's sound. When I joined the band, Stan had begun to shift away from the jazz-classical approach he was exploring with his Innovations Orchestra and going with the kind of swinging music that a lot of the guys in the band wanted to play.

JW: What did Stan tell you?LN: He said the band was going out on the road. He asked me to play second alto. Bud Shank was playing first alto. Soon after I got the job, Bud left and Dick Meldonian was hired to play first alto. In April 1952, several months after I began with Stan, we were playing in Boston when I got my draft notice. I told Stan, and he said, “That’s a shame, you were just getting started.” I said to myself, "This is the end of my career."

JW: What happened in the Army?LN: I did my basic training on the West Coast and met Clint Eastwood there. He was in the same training camp. Basic was supposed to last 16 weeks—eight weeks of training and, if you made it through, you spent another eight weeks learning how to shoot a gun.

JW: This was in the middle of the Korean War.LN: Yes. After the first eight weeks, I realized I knew several guys in the Army band. I went over to say hi. I wanted to get into the band. A friend said the band needed an oboe player. Oboe players were very difficult to find. So I auditioned and got the position. We played parades in San Jose and Monterey. I rehearsed with the band in the morning and practiced in the afternoon.

JW: Did you play anything other than parades?LN: Yes, we played transcriptions of classical pieces and recorded them once a week for airing on the radio on Saturday mornings. We also played and marched around the field on Saturday mornings, and the general would come forward and give out medals for different reasons. We even were in a competition of marching bands.

JW: How did you do?LN: The bandleader asked me to write a marching band composition. So I did. We didn’t win first prize but I won second prize. It was called the Infantry Blue. It was like a John Philip Sousa march.

JW: Were you looking forward to returning to Kenton's band?LN: Yes, very much so, if there was a spot open. The first arrangement I wrote for Stan before I went into the Army was Pennies From Heaven. I also wrote a couple for Stan's singer at the time, Jerri Winters, including What a Difference a Day Makes. One day in 1953, I was on a furlough and came down to Los Angeles. I was sitting in a restaurant in Malibu with my wife, who wasn’t my wife yet, having a hamburger. The place had an old jukebox. All of sudden I heard my arrangement of Pennies From Heaven. Sure enough, Stan had put it out as a single. The first arrangement I wrote for Stan, and the band had recorded it. I was floored. [Photo above of Stan Kenton and Jerri Winters, courtesy of University of North Texas]

JW: In 1954, when you were discharged from the Army. Did you reconnect with Kenton?LN: As soon as I got out Stan called me and said, “You’re just in time. Lee Konitz just left the band.” So I rejoined Stan's band and recorded as leader of small groups. Soon after I rejoined Stan, we went out on tour with Art Tatum, Slam Stewart, Shorty Rogers and His Giants, guitarist Johnny Smith, and Charlie Ventura with Mary Ann McCall.

JW: What do you remember about the West Coast scene back then?LN: I remember the argument over which was better—West Coast or East Coast jazz. It was all ridiculous, since you had West Coast guys like Zoot Sims living back East and Shorty Rogers, an Easterner, on the West Coast. But hey, record companies were recording West Coast musicians, so who was to argue [laughs].

JW: Was there truly a difference in sound?LN: Not much. West Coast music was perhaps a little more cerebral. I don’t say that in a judgmental way. It's just that many of the guys who played it came out of music school. For me, the sound came naturally after studying counterpoint in college. Similarly, many of the guys on the West Coast were studying counterpoint with Wesley LaViolette and other classical theorists. All of us were experimenting with different types of linear writing.

JW: Yet the sound was unified.LN: We would let a guy blow in an arrangement, but we’d always supply a linear background for it. We’d add interludes, but the backgrounds and endings had to make sense. We’d always tie it up at the end. That’s the way it came out.

JW: Did you enjoy recording Kenton's Contemporary Concepts album in 1955?LN: It was great. On our tour, Stan had left Bill Holman in New York to arrange the whole thing. It took Bill about three weeks to complete the six charts, and the result was fantastic. Bill had a way of taking a tune and making it his own. The band loved Bill's Stompin' at the Savoy. We'd always eagerly wait for Stan to call that one.

JW: On that album, different members of the band were featured soloists on different songs.LN: Yes, that was the concept. Bill wrote each song with a different soloist in mind. For example, alto saxophonist Charlie Mariano was the soloist on Stella by Starlight. He played it beautifully. Tenor saxophonist Bill Perkins had Yesterdays. Bill wrote Cherokee for me. There are versions of that song that I recorded at different places during our tour that year. Each time we played the song, it got faster and faster [laughs]. I was playing it every night. Bill's arrangement sent chills down my spine.

JW: Was traveling with Kenton rough?LN: The pace was grueling. We would travel, play a one-nighter and travel again for weeks at a time. The dances we played usually lasted from 9 p.m. to 1 a.m. If we played a concert, it would last from 8:30 to 10:30 p.m. Then when a concert or dance was over, we'd get on the bus and travel up to 400 miles to our next gig. Many times there was no time to check into a hotel when we arrived because we had traveled so far. I don't think the gigs were particularly well planned [laughs].

JW: What do you mean?LN: I doubt whoever was back at the booking office was thinking out the best route for the band or taking into account the distances we had to travel. The guys used to joke that someone must have been throwing darts at a map. Sometimes we'd pass through towns that we had raced through two days earlier.

JW: What was life like on the bus?LN: We'd eat and sleep there, wake up in the morning and stop for breakfast. For lunch, we’d go into a store for bread and peanut butter, and make sandwiches. We'd arrive at a job with just enough time to change into our uniforms and get on the bandstand. We were always tired. But as soon as the band began to play, that old feeling would come back and you were energized.

JW: Was Stan a tough boss?LN: Things were said about Stan, that he was stiff or a taskmaster. But he was really a sincere guy. He always encouraged the players and gave everyone solo spots. He urged arrangers in the band to write, and he played their charts. Charts he didn't like he'd leave in the band's book and just didn't call them. Stan never created a mean-spirited climate of competition among his players or arrangers.

JW: The Kenton band's sound changed a couple of times while you were there.LN: Yes. The first turning point was probably in 1952 when he commissioned Gerry Mulligan to write arrangements. Stan didn't know what Gerry would do, but he was confident it would be interesting. When I joined the band in 1952, Gerry came in with 10 arrangements, including Walkin' Shoes, Limelight, Young Blood, Swing House and some ballads. [Photo above of Gerry Mulligan, standing in the center, and Stan Kenton, seated, courtesy of University of North Texas]

JW: What impact did Mulligan's arrangements have on the band?LN: They lightened up the sound. Gerry wrote unison, contrapuntal lines, and he didn't have the band play triple forte all the time. Those charts had a big influence on me. They taught me that when someone's playing a solo, the background needs to be supportive and engaging, not deafening. After Gerry, the key was not to mow down the soloist but echo and support the sound.

JW: Did you ever tell Mulligan how much he influenced you?LN: No. Gerry sort of came and went. He was aloof. But he still left his mark. As the years went by, Stan remained attached to Gerry's sensibility. The second big turning point came in 1954 when Bill Holman and I began writing charts that took Gerry's sound to a new level. Stan always favored highs and lows in the band—the trumpets on top and the bass trombone and baritone saxophone on the bottom. But after Gerry's arrangements, Stan liked a lot more interchange with the band's different sections.

JW: Your arrangements for The Stage Door Swings in 1958 placed a new emphasis on the reed section.LN: Stan wanted an album based on Broadway show tunes. He locked me in a room in a Chicago hotel. With my work ethic, if I had an idea at 3 a.m., I’d get up and start writing. They brought an electric piano into my room and I had headphones so I wouldn’t disturb other guests. After 2 1/2 weeks, I had produced 12 songs, about one a day. I was on a mission. I get like that still. Even if it’s 2 a.m., I have to finish.

JW: Did Kenton give you any instructions before locking you away?LN: He asked me to base the different tunes on riffs—you know, musical patterns that repeat. So with Lullaby of Broadway, I thought, hey, I’ll base it on Intermission Riff. So I changed the standard's chords, and that became the hook.

JW: And Baubles, Bangles and Beads opens like Johnny Richards' arrangement of I Concentrate on You from the Back to Balboa album recorded earlier that year.LN: That's right. I didn't consciously decide, "I'm going to pick up Johnny's thing." I think it was more of me using it as a way to tell Johnny, "You know that great line you had? I'm going to use it as a springboard." The listener who knew the earlier album thinks it's going to be I Concentrate on You but instead it becomes Baubles, Bangles and Beads. So there's recognition by the listener and then surprise and finally delight when the song becomes something else.

JW: What did Kenton think of your charts?LN: Stan loved the album. Producer Lee Gillette said it was one of the best albums the band had released. Those were the days when stereo was coming in and guys in the engineer's booth were thinking about which instruments should come out of the left and right speakers. Lee said, “You did a great job putting it in stereo.” I wasn’t thinking along those lines, but it came out that way [laughs].

JW: Your arrangement of and solo on End of a Love Affair from Stan Kenton at the Tropicana remains stunning 50 years later.LN: Of everything I recorded with Stan, that’s my favorite ballad solo. I don’t know why it turned out so well. I arranged it so it would start with just bassist Red Kelly and me playing. Along the way I added brass and reeds and built the instrumentation softly. I wanted that Gerry Mulligan sound with the band. No Kenton arrangement had ever opened like that—with just bass and alto saxophone.

JW: You wrote the ending so it would have a regretful feel, almost a sigh, to play off the song's title.LN: I wrote the ending so it would close on dissonant notes. That was my training. While it's not a pure 12-tone row, I wanted that atonal feel. That's what I heard in my head when I was writing the chart. Also, there are chords in my arrangement that weren't in the original tune. I had to write them out so that if I left the band, someone else could play the alto solo [laughs].

JW: In mid-1961, Kenton recorded Sophisticated Approach, an album that also was arranged completely by you.LN: Yes. By then I had left Stan, but he hired me to arrange a band he had assembled with four mellophoniums. Stan had used French horns in the past but the instrument's bell turned away from the audience, and collectively they weren't a strong enough sound. Stan loved the trombone sound and was one of the first to use five in a section. So Stan went to the folks at C.G. Conn and asked them to make a French horn but with traditional valves and a straight bell. Once he had what he wanted in the mellophonium, he needed arrangements that complemented them.

JW: What did Kenton suggest you do for Sophisticated Approach?LN: Stan wanted to remove one of the alto saxes. And he wondered what we should put under the one that remained. I said two tenor saxes and two baritone saxes, because one of the baritones could drop out and one of the bass trombones could come in and fill that gap. I told him we could still do all the familiar standards.

JW: How many arrangements did Kenton want?LN: There was no number. All he said to me was, "Keep writing." I said, "Write what?" He said, "Anything you want." So I went to work. I loved writing for Stan's dance band. After I left, I must have written 100 arrangements for him. And they were all for his dance band, which I loved. Remember, when I had first joined Stan's band in 1952, they had difficulty playing a dance.

JW: Why?LN: Because it was too much of a jazz band. The arrangements were too fast, the arrangements never settled into a groove, and people couldn't dance to what the band was playing.

JW: You also arranged the album Adventures in Standards, which only had limited distribution on Kenton's Creative World label.LN: These were arrangements written at about the same time as the Sophisticated Approach charts. Except I arranged Broadway tunes for the mellophonium band. All had that inhale-exhale, ballad feel.

JW: So when you look back over the three Kenton albums you arranged, which one is your favorite?LN: I liked what I did on Sophisticated Approach. But I'd have to say that The Stage Door Swings is my favorite. It's more dynamic and rushes at the listener.

JW: You recorded five albums for Contemporary and one for EmArcy as a small-group leader in the 1950s.LN: When I got out of the Army, I had offers from three labels—Pacific Jazz, Contemporary and Stan Kenton Presents. I was stuck and wasn't sure which way to go. So I said to Shelly Manne, “I don’t know what to do. Dick Bock at Pacific Jazz has a good stable. And Stan uses the guys from his band on his label. But I’m not sure how well it will go. And then there's Les Koenig at Contemporary.”

JW: What was Manne's advice?LN: Shelly told me to go with Contemporary. He said, “Les Koenig will let you do anything you want. He’ll just record you.” At the time, I wanted to record a new sound. I loved the concept of the Gerry Mulligan Quartet, with its contrapuntal exchanges. But I wanted a richer, more textured result in my small groups.

JW: Your first Contemporary album, in 1954, was a quintet session.LN: On that album, I found a way to voice the three saxes—me, Jack Montrose on tenor and Bob Gordon on baritone—so that we sounded like six saxes.

JW: How did you do that?LN: I wrote a voicing that resulted in a special sound. First I’d find the notes in a chord that I wanted to use. Then I’d voice those notes so they produced overtones.

JW: How so?LN: It's similar to what happens when you hit a note on the piano and hold it down with the sustaining pedal. You first hear the initial note. Then as the note rings, you start to hear the overtone, or other notes that color it. The notes I wrote for the saxes resonated like that.

JW: What does the average ear hear?LN: By picking the right notes, I wound up with a fuller sound. The overtones create the sensation that there are three more saxes on the date. In other words, by spreading out the three saxes just right, your ear thinks it hears notes that aren't there. As a result, you think additional saxes are playing—without the density that would occur if six saxes were playing.

JW: What did this voicing and use of space do for the soloist?LN: Instead of voicing closely, I did close voicing. Which just means a little less close [laughs]. I spread the chord open. This open feeling gave the person improvising more freedom. In the past, small groups had everyone play a line and then each of the musicians took turns soloing. To me, that was a boring formula. Instead, I wanted a light line leading up to a solo, then the solo followed by an interlude with all saxes playing before the next soloist started. This created a more swinging feel.

JW: Did you have Gerry Mulligan or Dave Pell’s octet of 1953 in mind?LN: No. I was developing my thing separately. I loved Gerry’s group, and Dave’s octet was interesting. But I wasn’t thinking about anyone else except what I wanted to do. You have to understand that the linear sound in small groups was prevalent back then. I wanted to find a way to make what I was doing different.

JW: Was there a method to your choice of sidemen? You used different horn players on each session.LN: I tried to get the best players I could for what I wanted to do. I always used Shelly Manne on drums and Monty Budwig on bass. The unifying factor was that the sidemen had to be great sight-readers and have a special sound with the ensemble and while soloing. [Publicity photo above of Shelly Manne in 1960]

JW: On your first octet album in 1954, you used Lou Levy on piano.LN: Lou was a great player. At one point in 1951 he decided to leave the music business and go into real estate back home in Minnesota. When we toured the state with Stan in 1954, Lou would hang out with the band. A year later he came out to Los Angeles to see about playing opportunities. I liked what he was playing around town so I asked him if he wanted to record. The first album he did when he returned to L.A. was my first octet recording in 1954. [Publicity photo above of Lou Levy in 1961]

JW: In 1955, you began to use tenor saxophonist Bill Perkins in your small-group sessions.LN: Perk had the perfect sound for what I wanted to do. He, too, was interested in finding a new sound, and he liked playing forgotten tunes, like Rockin' Chair and things like that. He had a beautiful sound. Many tenor saxophonists on the West Coast back then had a soft, Lester Young sound. Perk had a soft, velvety sound, but he could play that sound hard.

JW: Yet Perkins didn't maintain that sound throughout his career.LN: Over time Perk played more in line with what Wayne Shorter was doing. Even in the 1990s, people would ask him to play Yesterdays like he did back in 1955 with Stan Kenton on Contemporary Concepts. That would irk him. He’d ask me, “Why do they want me to sound like I did 40 years ago?” But when he played with me on dates in the 1990s, he’d unconsciously revert to playing like he did back then. You can hear him do that on Live at Capozzoli’s, which we recorded in Las Vegas in 1999 for Bob Lorenz. I didn’t tell Perk how I wanted him to play on that date. He just followed me. I think he felt it was right for the situation.

JW: Some of your sideman dates in the 1950s were out there, like Duane Tatro’s Jazz for Moderns in 1954.LN: [Laughs] Duane was a friend of producer Les Koenig’s. He went into engineering but quickly grew tired of that and realized he wanted to be a musician. So Les hired him. When we recorded that album in 1954, the music seemed off the wall. But as time went by, it sounded more and more like classical music. It still sounds pretty modern.

JW: Did that type of modal music come easily to you?LN: Yes. In music school I studied 12-tone music with Ernst Krenek. It was a relatively small class, and Krenek taught me to be more creative harmonically and to get a 12-tone row without implying a chord. That was always the challenge with 12-tone rows—to create three-note interval lines without making it sound like a chord. I had always loved Alban Berg’s Violin Concerto, so 12-tone music seemed natural to me.

JW: You also wrote for the Hollywood Saxophone Quartet in 1955.LN: This was built on my contrapuntal sax soli concept [saxes playing in unison]. But the group wasn't comfortable without a rhythm section. So we added a bass and drums. I didn’t want a piano because it was just going to get in the way of all the moving parts. I wrote one whole album plus four tunes for another album.

JW: In March and April 1955, you recorded what I feel was your finest Contemporary small-group LP, The Quintets & Strings (Vol.4). LN: When I started recording for Les, he said, “Do anything you want—just keep recording albums.” So it was my choice. I had always wanted to incorporate strings into the linear format. But not the way strings had been customarily used, as accompanists. I wanted them running lines, the way a saxophone would. I had attended music school with violinist Christopher Kuzell. I called him and said I wanted three violas and a cellist for the date. Chris played one of the viola parts and brought in the other three string players.

JW: But the strings had to have a jazz feel since they were an integral part of your small-group sound.LN: That's right. I arranged the strings as though they were part of a sax section with me on top on alto. It was the first time I had written for strings since music school. To get the sound right, we rehearsed at my home. For a jazz feel, I told the string players not to read the eighth notes like eighth notes. Otherwise they would have played them too stiffly.

JW: What did you tell them?LN: I told them to play two eighth notes as though they were a quarter note and an eight note, with a No. 3 over it, more like a triplet. I wrote in parenthesis: “two eighth notes = a quarter note and an eighth note." Then I added a "3" over the top to indicate that the notes were to be played like triplets. All of this is technical stuff. The result was a hipper, swinging feel.

JW: Did the string players get it right away?LN: After we rehearsed, yes. Then I asked Monty Budwig to come and rehearse with us so the strings had the feel of playing against the time-keeping of the bass. Shelly Manne just came to the date and recorded his part perfectly. [Photo of Monty Budwig above with saxophonist Jimmy Giuffre]

JW: The instrumentation on your second octet album in 1956 came close to the Miles Davis’ nonet.LN: I wasn’t out to copy Miles Davis’s group. But I liked that feel for my octet. However, I dropped the piano and trumpet, which Miles had, and added a tenor sax, which wasn’t in his nonet. French hornist Vince DeRosa couldn’t play jazz but he could play with a feeling that I liked and wanted.

JW: Why did you record just four tracks on this octet date?LN: When the 12-inch LP arrived in 1956, Contemporary began reissuing its earlier 10-inch LPs on the new larger format. But the 12-inch LP had more room. So Les Koenig asked me for four more tracks to add to the new 12-inch release, to stretch it out. At first, instead of longer tracks to fill an album, producers just wanted more tracks. Each had to be three to four minutes long.

JW: Why?LN: Radio airplay was still a big consideration then. Which was fine by me [laughs].

JW: You’ve had a long association with actor-director Clint Eastwood. How did you two meet?LN: In 1952 I was inducted into the Army and did my basic training at Fort Ord in California. Part of basic training included jumping off a high diving board into a pool and swimming across. Clint was sitting there making sure no one panicked and drowned. He had already completed basic training. So I went off the board, hit the water, swam the length of the pool and climbed out. After, I hit the showers, I was walking too fast and slipped. When I fell, I split the skin between my big toe and the one next to it. There was blood all over the place. [Photo above of Clint Eastwood in the Army, courtesy of the Clint Eastwood Archive]

JW: What happened?LN: A sergeant started yelling at me to get up and get going. Clint appeared and said to the guy, “Can’t you see this soldier has a gash and is bleeding?” The sergeant realized what had happened and cooled down. Clint helped me up and got me over to the medics. I limped over, and once I was lying on a table, a medic came in and, without a shot, sewed up the gash. Clint stayed there the whole time while I got stitched up. That was it. We went our separate ways.

JW: Just like in one of the Westerns he'd soon be in.LN: [Laughs] Yes.

JW: Did Clint hear you play the saxophone back then?LN: Yes, but later. When I was still in the Army in 1953, I had a quartet and we played several non-commissioned officer clubs. They sold low-alcohol beer, and Clint was the bartender. He used to listen to me play as he was serving. On Sunday afternoons, I’d also play a club in nearby Santa Cruz. Clint would come in, order a beer and put his legs up and listen. He was still in the Army then.

JW: After the Army and after your years with Stan Kenton, you began writing for TV and the movies in 1960. How did you break into the business?LN: When I left Stan in 1959, there was an enormous amount of work in television in Hollywood. Every TV show needed music, particularly the celebrity specials. There also was lots of work orchestrating for the movies.

JW: For those who don't know, what’s the difference between arranging and orchestrating?LN: When you arrange, you take a song and write your own intro and select the instrumental mix to go with the song’s chords and melody. When you orchestrate for the movies, you take a composer’s rough sketch of a theme and score it for the different instrumental parts. In some cases the composer knows what he wants done with the movie's theme and tells you. In other cases the theme's composer gives you the freedom to do as you wish. In effect, you’re taking what the composer has written down and putting it to score paper. In architecture, it would be like taking a designer's sketch and creating detailed blueprints. In the process, as an orchestrator, you're often filling in the blanks with your vision.

JW: How did you start orchestrating for the movies?LN: I started by working with Jerry Fielding. He had been blacklisted by Hollywood in the early 1950s, and in the late 1950s he was at the Royal Las Vegas Hotel as musical director of their floor shows. When he'd come to L.A., he'd ask me over to his home to orchestrate songs for entertainers. It was mostly cue writing. Jerry would tell me what he wanted, and I’d write the cue music. [Photo above of Jerry Fielding]

JW: Why didn’t Fielding handle the orchestrations himself?LN: Jerry was a great composer but he couldn’t get started writing. He used to agonize quite a bit. I’d tell him, “Just write down whatever you’re thinking. Whatever you have in your head.”

JW: What did Fielding say?LN: He'd said, “But I need the song to be structured this way or that way." I’d tell him, “Fine. But write down what you think it should be, and you can change it later."

JW: Are you a fast writer?LN: Yes. I sit and think and write down little ideas and stitch them together. I never agonize, “Is this good or bad?” I just write down what I'm thinking, and it all comes together.

JW: How did Fielding hear about you?LN: In the late 1950s, Jerry called and said, “I understand you can orchestrate.” In L.A., they put you in a box. You’re either a jazz composer or an arranger or a conductor or this or that. I had studied orchestration in college and played with a concert band in the Army. So I knew every range of every instrument in the orchestra. Word got around town, and that's how Jerry and I teamed up. Orchestrating for Jerry gave me enormous experience writing for the clock, meaning synchronizing the music against things that were happening on the screen.

JW: When did Fielding return to composing for the movies?LN: In 1962, Otto Preminger asked him to compose for Advise and Consent. It was a big break for him. Then more movie work rolled in and his plate filled up. During this period and in the 1970s, I orchestrated for his movie projects and arranged for TV, including shows with the King Sisters, Dean Martin, Carol Burnett and many others.

JW: What was the first movie score you composed—meaning all of the music was yours?LN: Clint Eastwood’s Tightrope in 1984. Clint called me and said, “I have this little movie. I think you’re the perfect guy for the job.”

JW: Did Eastwood remember watching you get stitched up in the Army?LN: [Laughs] No. Even when I reminded him of it he didn’t recall. But he knew me more from the clubs in the early 1950s and knew that I had been with Stan and that I had orchestrated for Jerry.

JW: How did you approach Tightrope?LN: Clint asked me to meet him at his office. When I arrived, he said, “I want to take you to Bourbon Street in New Orleans. It’s like a cacophony of sound there.” I had been to Bourbon Street before when I played there with Stan Kenton, so I knew what he was talking about. But I still needed to get a feel for what he wanted exactly.

JW: When did you two leave?LN: [Laughs] About an hour or so after he told me. Clint told me to have my wife, Pat, put together a small bag for the weekend. Then we flew out on Warner Brothers’ private jet. When we arrived, we walked along Bourbon Street. Clint said to me, “Listen, hear those snippets of music on the left and right sides of the street?” As we strolled along, you could hear Dixieland, then country, then strip music across the street, then jazz and so on.

JW: What did Eastwood say?LN: Clint said, “Can you get that effect in the score?” I said, “Sure, but I’ll have to write complete tunes for each. We won’t know how much music from each club we’ll need until you walk along Bourbon Street.”

JW: Did Eastwood green-light your idea?LN: Yes. He said, “Great. Write eight different tunes and styles, and we’ll do the dubbing at the studio.”

JW: So how did that work in real time?LN: First I composed the eight different pieces. Then I arranged the tunes and brought in different musicians to record each of them. Then when I had film, I watched as Clint walked along Bourbon Street. Then I'd fade out one track of music and bring up another and repeat this as he walked along to create the effect Clint and I had heard in New Orleans.

JW: What are your favorite Lennie Niehaus scores for Eastwood films?LN: Probably Absolute Power [1997] and Space Cowboys [2000]. On Absolute Power, I used interesting cues that were sort of atonal. On Space Cowboys, I was able to use an Aaron Copland-esque approach, an Americana feel to express the patriotism and idealism of the movie's theme. There’s a cue I especially like when the astronauts are walking down a walkway to the rocket.

JW: For The Unforgiven (1992), who wrote Claudia’s Theme?LN: Clint did. It’s a lovely, haunting melody. Then I incorporated the theme into the orchestration throughout the film.

JW: How long does it take you to compose a movie score?LN: About four to five weeks.

JW: On Bird (1988), I heard that a complete replica of 52nd Street was built on the set. That must have seemed both exciting and surreal.LN: I had never been to 52nd Street during its heyday, but the set still gave me the chills. Every detail was precise and in place.

JW: Were Charlie Parker’s recordings used in the movie’s soundtrack?LN: Yes, but just Parker playing without piano, bass or drums. We dubbed those in with musicians to give Bird's solos a current sound.

JW: Why bother to do that?LN: Otherwise, Bird's music would have sounded like old records rather than fresh music you were seeing being created in the movie’s storyline.

JW: How did you do this?LN: I had to find recordings of Bird and remove the piano, bass and drums, which took a long time. Back then you didn’t have the digital technology you have today. In 1987, when we worked on the film, that meant a box that some guy hooked up. He turned knobs until all the other instruments were faded down as much as possible.

JW: Which recordings of Bird's worked best?LN: Ones where there wasn't too much going on around him. There was one of Bird playing All of Me with Lennie Tristano on piano and Kenny Clarke playing brushes on a telephone book or something. Lennie and Clarke were far off from the mic, so we could isolate Bird. It was too difficult to isolate Bird on recordings with Max Roach, for example, who dropped those terrific bombs on the drums. [Photo of Lennie Tristano and Charlie Parker]

JW: You also used alto saxophonist Charles McPherson in places with trumpeter Jon Faddis.LN: I used Charles for cues and incidental music, like after Bird in the movie swallows iodine in a suicide attempt and he’s looking in the mirror. Charles McPherson plays a single line there on the alto.

JW: How did you decide to use McPherson?LN: Clint called me in to look at Last of the Blue Devils, a documentary on Kansas City jazz. Many names of saxophonists were thrown around, some of them who were dead. Then I saw Charles in the documentary and he played beautifully. After the meeting, I asked fiends about him, and they said Charles could play and sound like Bird. So I brought him in.

JW: Why didn’t you play alto in the places where you needed it?LN: [Laughs] Because I don’t sound like Bird. I have a touch of Lee Konitz in my sound.

JW: How was Forest Whitaker's impersonation of Charlie Parker?LN: Terrific. I had to teach him how to hold the alto and finger the notes in place. But he was a quick study. [Photo above of Forest Whitaker as Charlie Parker in Bird]

JW: What needed work?LN: Forest had a tendency to roll his shoulders while playing. Bird never did that. Bird played as though his shoes were nailed to the floor. So I put my hands on Forest's shoulders to hold them still, so he'd understand. But it was still hard for him and a bit of that comes through in the film. There also were times during rehearsals where he was taking breaths when Bird was blowing. I told Forest that in places where he didn’t know the solo cold, he should just breathe through his nose to stay in sync and avoid an on-camera problem. Everything had to be rehearsed and worked out in advance. Clint likes one or two takes, max.

JW: Did you re-arrange the strings for the Bird with Strings scene?LN: Yes. Bird performed live with just four strings, a harp and an oboe along with a rhythm section. It was a financial matter, but he had always wanted to appear live with a far larger orchestra. In the movie, we used 20 strings for a big full sound plus an oboe. I had to show Forest the fingering on several held notes. Otherwise, when the movie came out, my phone would have rung off the hook from people saying he had fingered the wrong ones [laughs].

JW: What’s one of your favorite Lennie Niehaus cues?LN: I like the music I composed for The Bridges of Madison County [1995]. There’s a scene where Clint is standing in the rain and Meryl Streep is deciding whether or not to get out of her husband's pickup truck and go with him.

JW: Which part exactly do you like?LN: The music for the whole scene but in particular where Meryl has her hand on the truck's interior doorknob. Her husband's truck winds up behind Clint's and she can’t decide if she should get out of the truck and get into Clint's. I was writing music for a build-up to her hand on the doorknob. The scene starts with a piano playing. It's soon joined by strings. Then there’s a crescendo at the doorknob moment to emphasize the pathos of the dilemma and her indecision.

JW: You really remember every detail about this scene.LN: Even though I wrote the music, I'm still moved every time I hear it back.

June 01, 2020

In August 1982, jazz guitarist Lenny Breau was in Nashville to record, of all things, a country album—Swingin' on a Seven-String (Art of Life Records). Or rather, a jazz album of country songs with Western Swing sensibilities. For the studio session, Breau played a seven-string guitar and a six-string electric guitar. He was backed by the legendary Buddy Emmons on pedal-steel guitar, Jim Ferguson on bass and Kenny Malone on drums. [Photo above of Lenny Breau courtesy of LennyBreau.net]

The seven-string guitar is unusual in that it adds a string to the more common six-string setup. The extra string gives the guitar an additional bass note (a low B) or treble note (high A). In the case of Breau's guitar, the seventh string was a high A. According to Paul Kohler, president of Art of Life Records, "Breau had to use fishing line as his high A-string at the time because he was unable to find any nylon strings that would not break when he tuned that string up to pitch."

Breau's grace on the seven-string guitar is only enhanced by the inclusion of Emmons, who keeps a lid on his meowing pedal-steel guitar and allows Breau to lead. Ferguson's bass is magnificent and tasteful as the low voice, and Malone's drums swing with a feathery touch. [Photo above of Buddy Emmons]

Originally released in 1984 as When Lightn' Strikes on vinyl, the album has been reissued by Art of Life Records. The label digitally remastered the original analog master tapes via 24-bit digital technology to give it a clean, warm sound. [Photo above of Jim Ferguson courtesy of Jim Ferguson]

In addition to the original tracks—(Back Home Again In) Indiana,You Needed Me,Bonaparte's Retreat,I Can't Help It If I'm Still In Love With You, I Love You Because, Please Release Me, Blue Moon of Kentucky, She Thinks I Still Care, I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry and Anytime—a previously unreleased track has been added: Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain. [Photo above of Kenny Malone, courtesy of Kenny Malone]

This little-known gem of an album is gorgeous in so many ways. The song choices are perfect, the talent is extraordinary and the pairing of the tender cosmopolite Breau with country's man of steel, Emmons, was ingenious. To accommodate the material, Breau shifts a little country while Emmons dusts off his swinging jazz chops.

With this album, we hear yet again Breau's exceptional ability and inventive craftsmanship on guitar. It's also a joy to hear Emmons let loose on Blue Moon of Kentucky. [Photo above of Buddy Emmons and Lenny Breau, courtesy of BuddyEmmons.com]

Here's what Jim Ferguson told me yesterday about Breau and the recording:

At the time we recorded this album, I had been playing mostly duo gigs with Lenny for about a year. I also was working occasionally as a singer for a Nashville company that did "sound-alike" records, mostly of different pop artists of the late '70s.

One day in the studio, I casually mentioned to the engineer that I'd been working with Lenny and that I wished someone would record him again before his reckless behavior with drugs did him in. Little did I know Lenny would be gone within two short years.

To my surprise, the engineer, Hollis Halford, called me the next day to say that he'd told Paul Whitehead, who owned the company, about my working with Lenny and that Paul wanted to make a record. I got with Lenny, and he decided to make it half duo and half quartet.

Lenny had recorded with Buddy Emmons about four years earlier on a project called Minors Aloud, so they were well acquainted. Kenny Malone also had been on that recording along with the pianist and songwriter Randy Goodrum and the late Nashville bassist Charles Dungey.

For our sessions in '82, there were no rehearsals. Lenny made a few chords charts, but he often strayed from them considerably. You Needed Me is a great example of how he might launch into a completely different feel in the middle of a take. Recording direct to two-track stereo meant no fixes, so I generally just held on for dear life.

Lenny was a little more straight-ahead on the quartet numbers, thankfully, though no one knew he was going to sing the intro of Bonaparte's Retreat. He spontaneously leaned over and sang into his guitar mic to start the tune! The engineer was quite surprised, to say the least, but it was perfect!

Lenny Breau died in 1984; Buddy Emmons died in 2015.

A special thanks to Jim Ferguson, who alerted me to this precious album and provided insight. And to Paul Kohler, president of Art of Life Records

May 30, 2020

This week in The Wall Street Journal, I interviewed actor Josh Gad for my "House Call" column in the Mansion section (go here). Josh stars in HBO's comedy series Avenue 5. He also is the voice of Olaf in the Frozen series and many other characters in animated movies, including the upcoming Artemis Fowl. Josh and I talked about his childhood, the trauma of his parents' divorce and how the stage helped him overcome his restlessness at an early age. [Photo of Josh Gad above courtesy of Josh Gad/Twitter]

Birth of the Cool. Following my post last week on Bobby Spellman's Revenge of the Cool and my mention of Gil Evans's apartment at 14 West 55th Street, director Raymond De Felitta sent along the photo above of 14 and 16 West 55th St. in 1940 (with the laundry evident, if you enlarge the photo). This from Peter Levin: "Based on the bio excerpted here, Gil Evans’s apartment was at the back of the building, behind the laundry, looking onto a courtyard. So No. 14 still works for the address."

Here's Gerry Mulligan's arrangement of Miles Davis's Deception from the Birth of the Cool sessions...

Rosemary Clooney. In 1968, singer Rosemary Clooney suffered a breakdown following the assassination of Robert Kennedy in June. More on this in a Ladies Home Journalarticle in 1976. (Bear with the odd sexism that crept into the writing.) More on this period on page 215 of Clooney's memoir here. Fortunately, Clooney overcame her mental challenges and, in 1975, she performed for the first time in years on TheMerv Griffin Show. At Lin McPhillips's Facebook page last week, I found this clip, which marked her comeback...

Bill Evans. Last week pianist Dave Thompson sent along a link to the rare, out-of-print Homewood sessions by Bill Evans in November 1970. According to Peter Pettinger, author of Bill Evans: How My Heart Sings...

In November [1970], the trio [Evans, Eddie Gomez on bass and Marty Morell on drums] was in Chicago recording a half-hour set for television. The film was made for use in Los Angeles and was later relayed from the Homewood Theatre in Hollywood under the title Jazz Sounds and a Cool Groove... The Evans [audio] set was issued as Homewood on Red Bird Records, a rare pressing indeed.

And here's pianist Dave Thompson at home playing Bill Evans's Time Remembered...

Brad Terry. If you enjoyed my recent post on guitarist Lenny Breau and clarinetist Brad Terry, you're in luck. Brad has a wonderful memoir out entitled I Feel More Like I Do Now Than I Did Yesterday: A Collection of Remembered Stories. The 390-page book is thick with recollections, including the Lenny Breau sessions.

To order the memoir from Brad, send him check for $30 (postage is included and he'll autographed it if you ask). Send the check to...

Brad Terry36 Willow St.Bath, ME. 04530

Jimmy Cobb radio. On Tuesday, June 2, WKCR-FM in New York will present a memorial broadcast honoring late drummer Jimmy Cobb. His music will air for 24 hours. To listen from anywhere in the world on your phone, iPad or computer, go here.

Mann, who passed away in 1967, had an exemplary career that mirrored the trends of mid-century American filmmaking. He began by directing film noirs, moved into adult Westerns, many of which starred James Stewart, and ultimately found his way into the world of epics, which dominated commercial cinema in the early to mid 1960s, making two of the undisputed classics of the genre.

Nina has some fascinating insights and stories about her father. She is also brave and honest about aspects of their lives that a lesser person might not have chosen to reveal.

You can listen to Raymond's interview on any of your favorite podcast platforms (Stitcher, Apple, Spotify etc.) or by going here and clicking on the "Episodes" button in the upper right-hand corner of the page.

John Cameron is a British composer, arranger, conductor and musician and a dear friend. Known for his many film, TV and stage projects, John also made hit recordings with Donovan and Cilla Black among others. Now, the lockdown has compelled John to try his hand at something new—original chilled jazz and visuals with Dave Mann. Here's one of them...

May 29, 2020

Released in 1960, director Jean-Luc Godard's film Breathless showed us the life of a French grifter (Jean-Paul Belmondo) and his American girlfriend (Jean Seberg). The movie was an early French New Wave film and pioneered the use of the jump cut—film edited so that scenes are broken into two parts, with a chunk of time eliminated. This technique pushed the story forward without showing every detail of what had happened, forcing the viewer to use his or her imagination.

Also in Breathless, Seberg ushered in a new female archetype in sixties film—the childlike woman who was both innocent and experienced. Seberg's adolescent look would be given a polished elegance by Audrey Hepburn a year later in Breakfast at Tiffany's and a frantic neuroticism by Mia Farrow in Rosemary's Baby in 1968. Twiggy also leveraged Seberg's boyish style in fashion in the mid-1960s. Seberg died in 1979 of a barbiturate overdose. She was 40.

Here's Godard's Breathless, with a sterling jazz soundtrack by French pianist Martial Solal...

May 28, 2020

The Birth of the Cool was born at 14 West 55th Street in Manhattan in 1947 (above). There, at arranger Gil Evans's bare-bones apartment, musicians constrained by bebop's small-group limitations began meeting to develop a new, broader sound. Inspired by Claude Thornhill's sighing sectional approach to orchestral jazz, revolutionary arrangers including Evans, Gerry Mulligan, John Lewis, George Russell, Miles Davis and John Carisi met to work out a new writing approach. [Pictured above, vacant Manhattan lots at 12-18 West 55th Street in 2018, just off Fifth Avenue, after the demolition of Gil Evans's old building and others]

At the time, Davis was performing and recording with Charlie Parker, one of bebop's chief architects. Evans and Mulligan were both arrangers for Thornhill. And many of the musicians eventually assembled were leading beboppers eager to experiment. At Evans's flat in the late '40s, the arrangers sifted bop, classical impressionism and Thornill's relaxed, dramatic sound into a cost-efficient nonet. [Photo above of Charlie Parker and Miles Davis in the late 1940s by William P. Gottlieb]

Among the cutting-edge musicians recruited for the Miles Davis Nonet were Max Roach, J.J. Johnson, Kenny Clarke, Al Haig, Lee Konitz and Kai Winding. The results were first performed a few blocks away at the Royal Roost in 1948. Studio sessions for Capitol followed in '49 and '50.

Though the music on 78s and then a 10-inch Miles Davis album didn't catch on with jazz fans at first, Capitol had success with a 12-inch version in the late 1950s called Birth of the Cool after Davis signed with Columbia and became modern jazz's first superstar.

Now, Bobby Spellman, a jazz trumpeter, composer, educator, has updated the Birth of the Cool approach on his new album, Revenge of the Cool (Sunnyside). The album features a nonet comprised of the following musicians on different tracks: Bobby Spellman (tp and slide tp), Emily Pecoraro and David Leon (as), Tyler Burchfield (bs), Kyra Sims (Fr hrn), Justin Mullens (Fr hrn), Tim Shneier (tb), Ben Stapp (tuba), Ben Schwendener and Eli Wallace (p), Andrew Schiller (b) and Evan Hyde (d).

Recorded in May 2019, all seven compositions are by Spellman and, I suspect, arranged by him as well. Spellman's bio can be found at his site here. Though the music diverts occasionally into the avant-garde, Spellman remains for the most part under the sway of the Thornhill-Evans sound. At times, it's the focus. At other times, it's a backdrop, or he bends and twists the approach neatly, which is fascinating.

Jazz fans will be gratified that Spellman and his nonet have rediscovered the beauty and grace of Birth of the Cool and have found a way to update the historic sound and present the nonet's feel without surrendering originality.

May 27, 2020

Late last year and early this year, I featured two posts on Italian romantic pop from the 1960s (go here and here). Interestingly, France was undergoing the same phenomenon in the sixties. As the European post-war economy improved, incomes climbed and tourism surged along with moody French New Wave film and delicate French cuisine. A new romantic optimism influenced by American pop began to emerge in French music. [Cover photo above of Francoise Hardy in the 1960s]

May 26, 2020

Jimmy Cobb, a drummer whose sensitive, smoldering touch on Miles Davis albums such as Kind of Blue and Some Day My Prince Will Come gave the trumpeter's masterful sextet and quintet a sheer, elegant quality, died on May 24. He was 91.

Jimmy began his recording career on Dinah Washington 78s in the late 1940s followed by alto saxophonist Earl Bostic in the early 1950s. He then recorded LPs with Cannonball Adderley and his brother Nat throughout the 1950s. In fact, it was Cannonball who recommended Jimmy to Davis.

His work with Adderley led to a series of superb albums by John Coltrane during his Prestige and Atlantic years, including Stardust, Bahia, Giant Steps (only on the ballad Naima) and Coltrane Jazz. He also played drums on several of Wes Montgomery's albums for Riverside and Verve, including Full House, Boss Guitar and Guitar on the Go. Throughout the balance of his career, Jimmy worked steadily recording and touring as a sideman and a leader.

Over the years, I had a chance to interview Jimmy on a range of jazz subjects and albums, thanks to the grace of his wife, Eleana Tee Cobb. Jimmy was always open, relaxed and informative, aware that talking about the past was important for preserving jazz history.

Here is my complete Jimmy Cobb interview posted in January 2009, beginning with ny original introduction:

There's a moment on Miles Davis' Stella by Starlight in 1958 that crystallizes drummer Jimmy Cobb's brilliance. It happens in a flash, as Davis holds the final note of his trumpet solo and John Coltrane comes in on tenor saxophone. Typically, drummers don't get a chance to make that much of a difference on jazz recordings, save for keeping time and egging on soloists. But in this case, Jimmy's seamless change from wispy brushes behind Miles to solid wood rim shots to support Coltrane completely changes the mood and energy level of the standard. What had been up until that moment a sound akin to tiptoeing on hot gravel instantly feels like a breakaway gallop. Once Coltrane wrapped, Jimmy once again swapped sticks for brushes behind Bill Evans's solo.

These tasteful shifts perfectly define Jimmy Cobb's combination of sensitivity and power. No matter the recording, Jimmy's drumming always expressed a restrained tension that never failed to move the needle on the listener's anxiety level. Jimmy's ability to accompany artists by building intensity with brushes and sticks—without stealing their thunder—is one of the many reasons why he was always in demand as a session player with the greatest names in jazz.

JazzWax: Your first major recording was in 1951, on Earl Bostic's Flamingo, a massive hit.Jimmy Cobb: Yeah, it sold a lot of records. A lot of those Earl Bostic songs had the same general beat because Bostic had a thing he had to do to make money. He was a great saxophone player. He could play some notes on the horn that weren’t there. A whole octave above what the instrument was supposed to do. When [John] Coltrane came into his band, he learned a lot from Bostic. Like playing three notes at once and notes above what the horn could do. Bostic could make his alto sound like a tenor.

JW: Flamingo is a pretty famous recording.JC: I went to Russia once with trumpeter Valery Ponomarev. The man who ran the Moscow Tchaikovsky Conservatory was an alto player and wasn't fully aware of my background. He said to me, “I just found a recording of Earl Bostic’s. It’s called Flamingo. Do you know it?" [laughing] "Flamingo?" I said. “Hmmm, I'm not sure. Take a look at the clientele on there and tell me who's playing.” When the guy saw I was the drummer, he was floored.

JW: Was playing behind Bostic hard? There's a lot of beat there.JC: The drummer who was with Bostic before me [Shep Shepherd] was from the old school. He had a big foot, like Buddy Rich. He was a good drummer. When I got there, I was leaning over into bebop, but Bostic wouldn't let me play those figures. Because that wasn’t what he wanted. [Photo above of Shep Shepherd]

JW: Nearly everything Bostic recorded had that stripper beat. Did you play burlesque?JC: That’s funny you should ask. Yes, I played burlesque shows around Washington, D.C., when I was a kid. You had to be able to play everything back then. Everybody who played drums had to play all those different kind of ways. For Bostic, it was mostly back beats and shuffles. But you had to get power in there and sustain it for 10 to 20 minutes, which wasn't easy.

JW: So are you sick of hearing Flamingo?JC: [laughing] No, not really. I haven't heard it in some time.

JW: After Bostic, you were with Dinah Washington on her albums starting in late 1951. How was she able to memorize so many offbeat blues songs?JC: That’s what people did back then. They memorized everything. You had to. Dinah was raised in the Baptist church and could play the piano. So the blues was second nature to her. She could read lyrics and music. She was a good musician.

JW: Was she tough in the recording studio?JC: Not too bad. She was pretty regular and decent. I don’t remember her going crazy.

JW: You were with Washington from 1951 to 1955. Did she like you?JC: Actually we were going together, which made our musical relationship a little tighter. Sometimes she was tough. She liked to start things. We had a girl working for the band named Rose. One day we were in the [orchestra] pit of the Apollo Theater in Harlem. Dinah asked Rose to go downstairs to find a bucket of steam. Well Rose didn’t know what that meant and was too afraid to ask. So she went downstairs and tried to find a bucket of steam. [Photo above of Dinah Washington and Jimmy Cobb]

JW: What is a bucket of steam?JC: It ain't nothing. [laughing] Poor Rose would go around telling people, "Dinah's looking for a bucket of steam," and they’d laugh at her.

JW: Did Washington go through a lot of people?JC: Oh yes. She had a cruel streak like that. Probably because she was brought up around Gladys Hampton, Lionel’s wife and the person who ran Hamp's business side. Gladys used to buy Dinah nice things to wear on stage but at the end of the week she’d take it out of her pay. Most of the time it was stuff Dinah couldn’t afford. So Dinah would do the same thing to the girls who worked for her. They couldn’t afford what she was buying for them and they never would have bought those things for themselves.

JW: Did you love Dinah?JC: Yes I did. I had feelings for her.

JW: How did it end?JC: It ended kind of funny. Dinah was doing different things, and she thought that it was OK. One time I did the same thing and told her, and she went off. Today they call it seeing other people. Well, I got my things and moved up the street. We were living at 2040 7th Ave. in New York, which was an apartment house where many celebrities lived. Erroll Garner lived there. Dizzy and Lorraine [Gillespie] lived there, too.

JW: What did you learn from Dinah?JC: Feelings. I was brought up in a Catholic church. I was used to hearing carols and music like that. Dinah was a Baptist. When I heard that Baptist sound, it took me over. I wasn’t used to hearing that. It would make the hairs stand up on my arms and neck, where people are singing and shouting in church. That struck me right away. She taught me to put the passion into what I was doing.

JW: Where did you meet Cannonball Adderley?JC: I met Cannon when I was with Dinah. I met him when we were on tour in Florida. He was standing outside of the hotel when we were checking in. He was standing there and wanted to talk to me about New York. He was interested in coming up to the city and wanted to hear all the news about what guys like Jackie McLean were doing. Soon after he got a band together of his homeboys from the Ft. Lauderdale area. He also got a manager, John Levy, and brought him to hear his band.

JW: Who was in the group?JC: Cannon’s brother, Nat. So was Junior Mance and Sam Jones. John Levy heard the band and said, “The band sounds great but you need a stronger drummer.” I can’t remember who Cannon had at the time, but he asked me to replace him. We had a good little band there. I recently listened to some of those records and was very impressed.

JW: Did Adderley take the band on the road?JC: Oh yes. One time we went back to the town in Florida where Cannon started out. Back then, Nat used to sing a lot. They gigged in Ft. Lauderdale, at a place called Porky's. Nat used to get tips for his singing and split them with Cannon. Well, we went back there, and after we played a couple of tunes in the first set, the club’s owner came up to us and said, “When’s the little guy going to sing?” Cannon looked at him and said, “Oh, we don’t do that anymore.” The guy said, “Really? Well, get your shit packed up and get out of here.” [laughing] The guy put it down. He liked Nat’s singing and didn’t know about the bebop stuff.

JW: Did Cannon have his nickname by them?JC: Yes. His original nickname was Cannibal, because he ate so much. But Cannibal became Cannonball. He was a sweetheart. A smart, intelligent guy who could play.

JW: How did Junior Mance sound?JC: Junior was a child prodigy. Dinah used to use him sometimes, but he was so young that she had to go to his mother and ask permission and promise to take care of him. Junior has always been a good player. He had a thing about the rhythm sometimes back then, but he was a great player.

JW: How did you join Miles Davis in 1958?JC: I came to Miles through Cannonball. Philly Joe [Jones] had first played drums with Miles in 1953 and was a member of his groups since 1955. But by 1958,, Philly was recording on many different musicians' records. He was so established that he was getting ready to leave Miles and start his own thing.

JW: How did Jones's career plans affect his role as Miles Davis' drummer?JC: He was starting to come late to Miles' jobs. Cannon was especially worried because he needed the job. He was living in Nat’s apartment in New York and couldn’t stand not to have a gig, you know? When Cannon saw that Philly wasn’t showing up, he wasn't sure if Miles was going to keep the thing going.

JW: What did Adderley do?J C: He told Miles, “I know this guy who can swing and read, and he can come and sit on the side, and if [Philly] Joe don’t show, he can play.” That was me. Miles agreed, and when Joe didn’t show one night, I played. Soon after, the same thing happened at a record date. I think it was the On Green Dolphin Street session. Miles dug what I did on there.

JW: Why wasn’t Philly Joe Jones showing up?JC: I don’t know. He had some problems that he had to take care of, and sometimes those problems took longer than others.

JW: How did you know Davis dug what you were doing?JC: If Miles didn’t like what he heard, he’d let you know quick. One time when I was hanging around, before I joined the group, [Philly] Joe didn’t show up at a club matinee down in Philadelphia. Miles announced, “Anybody got some drums?” Some kid standing against the wall jumped forward and said, “Yeah Miles, I got some drums out in the car.” Miles said, “Great, go get them.” The kid went and got his drums and set them up and sat down and played.

JW: How did the gig turn out?JC: The kid played as good as he could. When he got off, he went up to Miles and asked, “How'd I do?” Miles looked at him and said, “Go tell Paul [Chambers] you’re sorry.” [laughs] Now that was cold. Miles would let you know how you did in his way.

JW: Did Davis ever do stuff like that to you?JC: No. One time he said something to me, and I said, “Man, let me play the drums.” He said, “Alright.” After that, me and him were like tight. I used to drive him to the gym and take pictures of him shadow boxing and all that stuff. If you see pictures of him at the gym, I probably took them. Another time, he said, “I sure wish I could swing like Wynton [Kelly].” I looked at him and said, “I sure wish you could, too, Miles.” [laughing]

JW: How did Davis react?JC: He gave me a look, but we were pretty good friends. He knew I was always there when we played. That was Miles's thing. He was always watching to see what you were going to bring.

JW: Your first recordings with Davis were in late May 1958, the On Green Dolphin Street session.JC: Yeah, man, I liked that song. I like the way it starts. I like the way Bill [Evans] set that up. Miles decided to do it that way, to build the anticipation, the tension.

JW: Then Porgy & Bess was recorded that summer.JC: That session scared me, man. I was looking at 25 musicians when I walked in. I said to myself, “What am I going to do now?” Fortunately Gil Evans had music there and the charts weren't that tough.

JW: Kind of Blue was recorded over two dates in the spring of 1959. In retrospect, was it as great a recording as many people think?JC: I think so. It is what it is. People still love it because it is great. The hype is there because it’s real.

JW: Was the So What riff inspired by Oscar Pettiford’s Bohemia After Dark?JC: I don’t know anything about that. But who knows? Funny things used to happen in the studio. We’d be in a recording session, and the engineer would say, “What song was that, Miles?” Miles would tell him, and the guy would write it down and credit Miles. A bunch of songs were attributed to Miles that way—like Four and Tune Up. Both were really by Eddie "Cleanhead" Vinson. I heard Cleanhead one time asked Miles for some money for those records. Cleanhead really deserves more credit. He was a good blues singer and a good player.

JW: What was it like to play with Bill Evans on Kind of Blue?JC: Sweet. Bill was a good piano player. On All Blues, he kept that tremolo going throughout the whole thing, and it made the record. I said to myself, “Wow, that guy is holding that tremolo in his left hand the whole time.” We didn’t talk much. Bill was a quiet kind of guy.

JW: How did Davis treat Evans?JC: They were cool. But Miles had his way of dealing with everyone in a funny way. I remember the group was riding in a car to a gig someplace in Ohio. Miles was talking, and Bill went to say something. Miles said, “Hold it, hold it man. We don’t want no white opinions.” Everyone kind of got quiet. Bill didn’t say anything, but his expression said “Whoa.”

JW: Where was Davis coming from?JC: No place. He respected everyone who played with him. But he also was fast to get in close and say something like that. Most people didn’t get that difference with Miles. It wasn't a racial thing. But Bill didn’t know Miles was fooling with him at the time. It was like Dinah Washington's thing about getting her a bucket of steam. Miles was a funny little guy. He was always busting in your face to see what your reaction would be.

JW: And Davis was fast with those lines.JC: That's right. On one of the Kind of Blue recording sessions, I was playing circles with brushes on the snare drum during a sound check. I had a brand new head on the snare, so the wire brushes sounded louder, hissy-er than if the head were older and more broken in. The engineer on the date came in over the monitor speaker and said, “Hey I’m getting white noise on the drums.” Miles said without missing a beat, “No, don’t worry about it, that’s part of it.” [laughing] Miles loved to throw people off. He thrived on the stuff he stirred up.

JW: Davis had his own way of saying things, didn’t he? You either got the subtext or you didn't.JC: Oh yes. One time Miles was stranded in Detroit. This is before I even got to know him. Someone interviewing him asked him, “Miles I heard one time in Detroit you was pimping.” Miles said, “Pimping? No, no I wasn’t pimping. Some girls who liked me wanted to take me out. The girls used to come by and see me and give me money, like $100, every day.” [laughing] He had the whole definition of pimping down except for the term itself. And he twisted it all around so the girls were somehow doing him a favor.

JW: What do most people not know about Kind of Blue?JC: Probably the power of it. It was a strong thing. Also, that Bill Evans had a bigger hand in writing many of those songs than most people realize. The feeling was very close to the way Bill played piano. Bill kind of got Miles into that groove. Years later, when Miles got Wayne Shorter, he got into Wayne’s groove, too. Miles would develop whatever he heard that felt good to him.

JW: There was a bit of a mix-up on Kind of Blue with Bill Evans and Wynton Kelly, wasn't there?JC: That’s right. Miles had Wynton Kelly in to the studio to play Freddie Freeloader [on March 2, 1959]. Wynton came in from Brooklyn, but when he showed up, Wynton saw Bill there and didn’t understand what was happening. By then he was officially in the sextet.

JW: What did he say to Davis?JC: He didn’t say nothing to Miles. He said to me, “Man, what’s happening? I thought I was on the gig.” I said, "You are, man, don’t panic. Bill’s just going to play something [So What] and you’re going to play something. So don’t worry about it. See, everybody winds up getting paid.” [laughing]. That cooled Wynton off right away. We were friends. I could talk to him like that. I'dknown Wynton since he was 19 years old.

JW: In late 1959, creative differences were creating a bit of friction between Davis and John Coltrane. You recorded with Coltrane on Coltrane Jazz. Davis didn't mind?JC: Nah. That's just the way it was. Trane wound up leaving Miles [in 1960] because he wanted to go in a different direction. The beauty of playing with Trane is that you could play anything you wanted. He didn’t care. He just wanted you to swing him up. Do what you had to do. He used a whole lot of trios that included Cedar Walton, Arthur Taylor and Paul Chambers. Most were with Paul. He and Paul were living together at the time.

JW: What did Coltrane think of your playing?JC: Trane dug my drumming. We was pretty cool. One time when Elvin [Jones] couldn’t make it, I think it was around 1961, Trane called me to go to Chicago with him in the dead of winter. I said, “Trane, listen, baby, you know after one tune I’m wet [perspiring] to start out. If I go to Chicago like that, I’m going to catch pneumonia and die out there.” I said “Look man, I love you, but I’m not going to go out there and die.” [laughs]

JW: Did Coltrane understand?JC: Oh yes. He asked who I thought he should get to take my place. I suggested Roy Haynes. That’s who he wound up going with.

JW: In January 1960 you played on This Here Is Bobby Timmons. What was Timmons like as an artist?JC: Bobby reinvented the piano on that thing. He had a real country feeling about a lot of that. Gospel, funk and everything. We had a lot of fun. Earlier in his career he played with Dinah [Washington]. We had him out on the road for about a minute.

JW: How was it different to play behind Timmons and Bill Evans?JC: It’s two totally different ideologies. Bill comes off like a European kind of classical thing. And Bobby comes off with a down home funk kind of a thing. Country style. Usually, in a situation like that, the drummer doesn’t have to adjust that much. You’re just playing rhythm, whether it’s Bill, Bobby or anyone else. I remember Bobby came into the studio on that record date and said, “I got this little thing I want to play." And he starts singing it to me [Jimmy scats a rhythm]. I say, wait a minute. Then Bobby tells the bass player [Sam Jones], "I want you to play this" [Jimmy scats a bass line]. He just comes in with those down home things and put them together. [laughs] We tried to do the best we could, and it came out all right. Bobby was a good player, and he matured a lot, man. He played in a lot of different meters.

JW: Timmons' hands were large, weren't they?JC: Yeah, he had kind of big hands. Not like [Harold] Mabern’s, but they were big. Bobby [pictured] was a shy little guy when I first met him. He was still like a little boy. But Bobby and I worked a lot together. I made four records with him.

JW: When Coltrane left the Miles Davis sextet in 1960, Davis replaced him with Sonny Stitt. On recordings, they sound like they’re a million miles apart, stylistically.JC: They were. Miles wanted Sonny [pictured] to play like Bird [Charlie Parker] on that tour. Sonny wanted to play alto and tenor. But Miles didn’t want him to play tenor. Miles said, “Man, I’m going to step on that tenor.” Sonny would get all upset and say, “Oh, man, Miles.” That was Miles’ way of letting Sonny know how he felt. Sonny took the tenor on tour with us anyway.

JW: Were they getting along?JC: Yes. It wasn’t like that. Everything was cool. Why?

JW: When you listen to the recordings, Miles's sound is distinctly 1960 but Sonny's playing sounds like it's 1949.JC: [Laughs] That’s how Miles wanted Sonny to sound, like Bird. When we were on that European tour, every time Sonny put the alto in his mouth, audiences went nuts. That’s what Miles wanted. That’s why Miles didn’t want him to play tenor. Miles dug that showtime alto sound. There was no animosity there.

JW: In the spring of 1961, you recorded with Davis' on Someday My Prince Will Come. Whose idea was it to open the title track with those dramatic metronome-like cymbal strokes?JC: Mine. I thought I had made a mistake by hitting the cymbal too high up and too hard. I thought the engineer might not have been able to control it. But during the playback, everyone liked it just as it was.

JW: How did Coltrane come to play on the title track? He was no longer in Davis's group.JC: By the time we recorded that album, Coltrane was working as a leader. On one of the days we recorded [March 20], Trane was playing at the Apollo Theater. Miles told him: “Come down to the recording session, if you can, between your thing and play something.”

JW: At this point, Hank Mobley was on tenor saxophone in the group.JC: That's right. So after Hank played his solo onSomeday My Prince Will Come, we looked through the glass of the engineer’s booth and there was Trane. In the middle of the song, Miles waved for him to come into the studio. Trane took out his horn and played the part he played, the second solo.

JW: It was a pretty stunning solo. How did Hank feel about that?JC: Hank was already done. He had already put his solo down. I don't know how he felt about it. You have to understand, Miles did that to a lot of guys. He had a working band once with both Sonny Rollins and Trane. At the time, Sonny was the tenor saxophone colossus. Trane wasn't that well known yet. Sonny got up there and like smacked Trane every night they played until they made Tenor Madness [in May 1956]. I think Sonny was kind of sorry he had him on that date 'cause he was about to hit his peak on that one.

JW: Was that a big turning point for Coltrane?JC: When Trane got into playing the things he got into [in 1959], I think that blew Sonny’s mind. That's when Sonny went up on the [Williamsburg] Bridge. Getting back to Sonny and Trane, Miles would do that on the bandstand to keep the edge going. He hired them both. They both knew they were going to be there. Miles would play the outside of a tune and sit down or walk to the bar and let them have at it.

JW: What went wrong on Quiet Nights in 1962 with Gil Evans? Not much was recorded.JC: I don’t know. I think that bossa nova stuff was brand new to Miles. I was just there trying to do what he wanted.

JW: Why weren’t you the drummer on Miles’ second quintet, the one he started in 1964?JC: Because I quit. In 1963 we were on tour. In the middle of the tour, Paul [Chambers] and Wynton [Kelly] left because of a misunderstanding with Miles over money. But we had six more weeks to go. Paul and Wynton wanted me to quit, too, to form a trio. I said, “Man, I can’t quit now. I need to do this tour.” I needed the money. So Paul and Wynton went back to New York and worked for a while around Brooklyn with [drummer] Arthur Taylor.

JW: Whom did Miles hire to replace them?JC: Miles went out and got Ron Carter [on bass] and Harold Mabern [on piano] along with Frank Strozier on alto and George Coleman on tenor. That’s how we finished the tour. When we finished, I gave notice. I wanted to join Paul and Wynton to form a trio. It was time.

JW: What did Davis say?JC: He said, “Cool. Go do the trio.” He asked me who he should get to take my place. We were out in L.A. at the time. I said, "About the best drummer I know out here is Frank Butler." So Miles called Frank Butler to record tracks for Seven Steps to Heaven. [By then Miles had dropped Strozier and had Coleman play alto saxophone; Victor Feldman replaced Mabern.]

JW: But Butler is on only the L.A. portion recorded in April 1963.JC: Miles had some problems with Frank's drumming and didn’t want him around anymore after L.A. So when the group got back to New York [in May] to record the rest of Seven Steps, Miles hired Tony [Williams on drums] and Herbie [Hancock on piano].

JW: After you left the group, you recorded with Wes.JC: Yes, I recorded Boss Guitar the day after I left Miles. Playing with Wes was great. We had a great time. Wes had about nine children he had to take care of. He had about three jobs, and only one of them was music. The other was construction and another was security guard at a milk factory. He slept just a few hours every day for 10 years, which is probably what made his heart bad. He worked too hard trying to take care of all those people. He didn’t read music but he could swing.

JW: Was Smokin at the Half Note in 1965 as exciting as it sounds.JC: Oh yes. Wynton could play with anyone, and he sounded good all the time—whether he was sick, drunk, in any tempo. Always. He didn’t know any other way to play. Wynton was born in Jamaica and moved to New York soon after. He was raised in Brooklyn and was a child prodigy. He just went to the piano one day and started to play it. By the time he was 16 years old, Wynton had already made records [with Hal Singer in 1948]. The first time I met him with Dinah, he was 21 and I was 19. The first time we played together, I knew we were a perfect match. But that’s how he was with everybody. He could play with everybody and sounded great every time.

JW: What was Kelly like as a person?JC: Wynton was a fun-loving guy. He’d give you his last $5 or the shirt off his back. And he was the “mayor” of his neighborhood in Brooklyn. Everybody knew and loved him. He’d play the numbers and then go to a happy hour at a bar from 5 to 7 pm. We used to hang out and do that and wait for the numbers to come out. He was a sweet guy. After that, he’d catch a cab and go into New York and play his ass off.

JW: You also played with Red Garland throughout your career. How did Red differ from Wynton?JC: Red started out trying to play like Ahmad Jamal. That’s what Miles was trying to fashion his original group on: Ahmad's sound. When Miles was in Chicago, he used to go to the Pershing every night and listen to Ahmad. Ahmad was his man. Red made albums that were exact duplicates.

JW: Red had punctuality problems, didn’t he?JC: [Laughs] Red could really swing. But sometimes he’d show up late. Other musicians on the date would get angry. When he’d arrive, he’d always tell some kind of astronomical lie. One time he came in late and said, “I’m sorry. I was coming down on the subway and some fool jumped off in front of the train and we had to wait until they got the guy out.” That was a lie because Red had a car!”

JW: Was he forgetful or just casual about the clock?JC: Casual. Another time, we were working with Miles at the Howard Theater in Washington, D.C. We opened on Friday, and Red didn’t get there until the midnight show on Saturday night. So we played a whole day without him. On another date, we played Birdland in New York. Red was uptown, at the back of the Apollo Theater, hanging out. Guys would be walking up to him saying, “Hey, Red, ain’t you working downtown?” Red would say, “Oh, yeah, yeah I’m about to go down there now.” I don’t know. He had some time thing with him.

JW: What did you think of Red's playing?JC: Red was a Texas swinger. A real blues player. I played Red’s last recorded live gig. We went to Japan [in 1980 with Lou Donaldson on alto and Jamil Nasser on bass]. Jamil had to go get him at his house in Texas to bring him to the airport. It took him about a half hour for Red to walk through the airport to get to the gate. He was in such bad shape the first two or three days.

JW: Red had a rough few years there.JC: Toward the end, Red would be at his house in Texas. His wife would make him his dinner. She’d say, “OK Red, I’m going to work. Your food is on the table.” She’d get back after work and the food would still be on the table. He’d be there drinking beer and stuff.

JW: Last question: What’s your absolute favorite track from Kind of Blue?JC:Freddie Freeloader, which we played with Wynton. And Bill Evans’ Blue in Green. I liked all of that stuff Bill put together for the album.

May 25, 2020

On July 17, 1982, three virtuoso jazz guitarists performed together on stage at the Congresgebouw in the Hague, the Netherlands, during the North Sea Jazz Festival. Known then as the Great Guitars, the trio featured Charlie Byrd, Herb Ellis and Barney Kessel. They were backed by bassist Joe Byrd, Charlie’s brother, and drummer Chuck Redd.

The songs they played were It's the Talk of the Town, Undecided, A Felicidade, Manha de Carnival, Nuages, Goin' Out of My Head, Flyin' Home, Speak Low and Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out. [Photo above, from left, of Charlie Byrd, Herb Ellis and Barney Kessel courtesy of YouTube]

Chris Cowles, whose radio show Greasy Tracks airs each Saturday from 3:30 to 5:30 p.m. (EDT) on WRTC-FM in Hartford, passed along the link to this knockout hour-plus performance.

May 23, 2020

In the Wall Street Journal this week, I interviewed the Supremes' Mary Wilson for my "House Call" column in the Mansion section (go here). Mary (above, top) co-founded the group when they were the Primettes and signed with Motown in 1961. Mary talked about meeting Diana Ross and Florence Ballard as kids and being raised by her aunt and uncle and thinking they were her real parents.

Mary is wonderfully talented, a cool customer and so lovely and warm. A joy to interview. Mary's latest coffee-table memoir is Supreme Glamour, which looks at the Supremes many fashionable stage outfits (go here).

Here are the Supremes in 1967, with Mary (right), Diana Ross and Cindy Birdsong (left), who replaced Florence Ballard that year, singing Reflections...

SiriusXM. Last week I was on Feedback with co-hosts Nik Carter and Lori Majewski to talk about Carly Simon, Carole Bayer Sager and my WSJ "Anatomy of a Song" column on Nobody Does It Better. To listen to an archived recording of the hour-long show, go here...

Steve Miller—of Fly Like an Eagle and Jet Airliner fame—is a jazz and blues heavy-hitter. I caught Steve at Jazz at Lincoln Center last summer with the Patrick Bartley Sextet and vocalist Brianna Thomas. Last week Steve's team sent along a link to a newly uploaded clip of him playing a blues with Les Paul at New York's Fat Tuesday in 1990. Go here...

Covideo.Here's Colt Clark and the Quarantine Kids playing Come Together...

Bill Evans. Last week, pianist Dave Thompson sent along a link to a series of audio clips of Bill Evans playing solo at Carnegie Hall between 1973 and 1978. Billy Taylor provided the introduction. One clip leads into the next—I Loves You Porgy, Hullo Bolinas, But Beautiful, You Must Believe in Spring, You Don't Know What Love Is and B Minor Waltz. Go here...

Hey Marc. Great to see your recent posting on Boston's legendary jazz scene. I just wanted to remind you (and your readers) about WPI's Jazz History Database (go here).

Professor Rich Falco has done a stellar job (along with his students & staff) of documenting the rich history of jazz in New England, including so many collections of interesting interviews, rare recordings and amazing photos.

The JHDB also houses the New England Jazz Hall of Fame, a great place to learn about all the famous and local artists that got their start in New England. Check out this video about Providence's own Bobby Hackett...

Swedish jazz. Saxophonist Bill Kirchner sent along a link to the following clip from Sweden in 1969. The clip features Severino (Sivuca) Dias de Oliveira (accordion, guitar), James Phillips (bass), Luizito Ferreira (drums), Leopoldo Fleming (percussion) with guests Putte Wickman (clarinet) and Monica Zetterlund (vocal)...

Frank Sinatra. Last week, Brad Berkwitt, CEO and publisher of Ringside Report (go here) sent along a link to the full 1990 Society of Singers celebration of Frank Sinatra in Los Angeles. Photo above courtesy of YouTube. Go here...

What the heck.Here's Julie London in 1961 singing (and acing) Time After Time...

About

Marc Myers writes regularly for The Wall Street Journal and is author of "Anatomy of a Song" (Grove) and "Why Jazz Happened." Founded in 2007, JazzWax is a three-time winner of the Jazz Journalists Association's best blog award.